Instant Camera

Hello. I am looking to buy an instant camera. I just want a point and shoot one. I'll be using to to take snap shots of places i've been and then tape it into my travel journal. It would be cool if I could find one that uses peel back film so I can do polaroid transfers. Does any one know of any good instant cameras out there? I've heard of the instaxmini and the polaroid z2300 and 300. Any opinions would be great. Am also not trying to break the bank with it since it is just for mementos.

If you are looking for a camera that uses peel-apart film, you have two options. The first are the folding cameras, such as the Automatic 100 and Automatic 430. These cameras have a bellows that collapses in order to make the camera smaller for storage. The other type are the rigid plastic cameras, such as the Colorpack II. These are cheaper, but are a lot bigger to carry around. One thing to note is that none of these cameras are point and shoot; they have to be focused before taking the picture. It's really easy to do; on most of them you just slide a bar until a double image comes together.

Personally, I recommend the Polaroid 430. The camera is relatively cheap (around $20), but it has a glass lens and folds up. For a battery, you can use a CR123 battery and tape the contacts to the battery. For film, you can use both Fuji FP-100C for color and FP-3000B for black and white. These run about $10 for 10 shots.

"Panic not my child, the Great Yellow Father has your hand"--Larry Dressler

Polaroid transfers with currently available materials are cumbersome and unlikely to work well for a travel journal. You'll need to be in near darkness within 30sec of snapping the picture and then you'll need very specific paper (unsized) to take the transfer. You may be able to find a book with unsized paper but if you're traveling you don't want to have to find near darkness to make the transfer every single time you take a shot.

The instax mini is very affordable, looks good, and seems to me it would work really well for a travel journal. The instax wide produces bigger pictures than the instax mini but may be bigger than what you want to travel with. I would steer away from the z2300 and 300 from what I've heard.

Alternatively to the "Transfer" technique, where merely dyes are transfered by a diffusion process, there is also the "Lift-Off" process where the whole emulsion is taken off like a pellicle. This can be done either with those peel-apart films as at least with one integral-film type.

Fuji's Instax comes in the mini and wide versions, each of which take different types of film. I believe both types of film are now available from Urban Outfitters, which in my town (Albuquerque) offers a better selection of film than the so-called dedicated camera stores.

I have the Fuji Instax Wide 210 model, which is very much a point-and-shoot. You can control focus range (near or far), exposure compensation and flash on/off. The wide prints are 16:9 aspect ratio, good for landscapes, less so for portraits unless you tilt the camera up on its side. It comes with a little close-up adapter lens that also has a protruding plastic arm that, if you line up in the middle of the optical viewfinder, helps to correct for parallax error. The c/u adapter also has a front-surfaced convex mirror to help you compose an arm's-length self-portrait.